Obama Takes Actions to Increase Immigration

The Obama administration is charging ahead with actions to promote more immigration into the United States, including veto threats, executive actions, and changes to the citizenship oath.

The recent murder in San Francisco by a repeat illegal alien has thrust the issue of “sanctuary cities” into the national spotlight. Sanctuary cites are places where municipal authorities have made it very plain that they will defy federal laws against illegal immigration. Combined with the high incidence of crime perpetrated by illegal aliens, the issue of sanctuary cities has led to calls for Congress to take substantive action against these pro-illegal alien local governments.

President Barack Obama, however, has threatened to veto a proposed bill to penalize sanctuary cities.

He has also announced his intentions to use his “executive authority” to make it easier for illegal aliens to remain inside the United States, despite federal laws. After all, he has a pen and a phone. The Department of Homeland Security has announced a proposed new rule that makes Obama’s 2013 executive action on immigration even more favorable to illegal aliens. The 2013 action by Obama created a waiver allowing an illegal alien with a U.S. citizen spouse or parent to remain inside the country. This differs with federal law, which requires they leave the United States and be prevented from returning for three to 10 years. All they would have to do is present “proof” their absence would create an “extreme hardship” for the spouse or parent.

What the new DHS rule would do is expand this eligibility to many other illegal aliens, including those who are not helped by the spouse/parent waiver.

The proposed rule states, “DHS proposes to expand the class of aliens who may be eligible for a provisional waiver beyond immediate relatives of U.S citizens to aliens in all statutorily eligible immigrant visa categories. Such aliens include family-sponsored immigrants, employment-based immigrants, certain special immigrants, and Diversity Visa program selectees, together with their derivative spouses and children.”

In other words, an illegal alien would be allowed to stay in the country while awaiting a visa, and not have to worry about any punishments under present law.

Present law stipulates that a person who spends time illegally in the United States for over one year cannot be legally admitted into the country for 10 years, but the Obama administration is proposing to waive that.

DHS said that the rule’s purpose is to “prioritize the family reunification of immediate relatives of U.S. citizens over other categories of aliens.”

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, called it a very bad policy. “The president should not be issuing executive actions that serve only to expedite the legalization process for those who have ignored our laws,” Vaughan said. “This legalization gimmick is undermining the integrity of our legal immigration system, and Congress should take steps to block it.”

If the past is any guide, Congress will do nothing of any substance to block Obama’s defiance of the law. The public has 60 days to comment on the proposal, which is practically meaningless. First of all, most of the public will not even know that Obama is doing such a thing, and it is highly doubtful that his administration cares about what comments they receive anyway. Moreso now because Obama waited until near the end of his second term to take this action, which avoids any electoral blowback for himself.

Of course, over the course of American history, the nation has witnessed large numbers of immigrants who have become highly patriotic naturalized American citizens. Many of these immigrants have worked in America’s factories, and many have built great American businesses. And the ranks of the armed forces have been swelled by first and second generation Americans, many of whom have given their lives on battlefields around the world.

In the citizenship oath for naturalized citizenship, these new citizens pledge to defend their new country. For many years, new citizens have taken the oath, in which they pledge to “bear arms on behalf of the United States,” and “perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States” when so required by law.

Or at least that was the oath, before Obama.

Now, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has decided to announce “clarified” requirements for becoming a naturalized citizen, by eliminating the requirement to defend the United States through military service! Now, a new citizen can just eliminate the above “two clauses based on religious training and belief or a conscientious objection.”

USCIS explained. “Reciting the Oath is part of the naturalization process. Candidates for citizenship normally declare that they will ‘bear arms on behalf of the United States’ when required by the law.” The new requirement states that the candidate is not required to belong to any specific church or religion, follow a particular theology or belief, or to have had religious training in order to qualify. The new citizen can just say, “It is against my conscience to take up arms to defend the country I am now becoming a citizen of.”

It is true that the United States presently does not have compulsory military service (and compulsory military service is constitutionally suspect), and the United States has long allowed for exceptions to combat based on religious convictions. In the past, however, Quakers would find alternative roles for service, such as by becoming medics, or chaplains’ assistants. This new Obama rule allows the naturalized citizen to simply refuse any service, period.

What could be the possible motivation for these actions of the Obama administration on immigration and naturalization? It should be recalled that when Obama was campaigning for president in 2008, he gave us fair warning, promising that if elected, he would commence with the “fundamental transformation of America.” Clearly, part of his plan to accomplish this goal is to bring more immigrants into the country — including individuals who have no loyalty to the United States — and many who are outright hostile to America.

In her new book, Adios America!, Ann Coulter contends that the Democrats detected the American population was slowly turning against them. When Democrats realized in the 1960s they were going to start losing elections, they developed an “evil, genius plan to change this country by restocking it with voters more favorably disposed to the left-wing policies than [the present composition of] Americans.”

An electoral map analysis would indicate that the tide was running against the Democratic Party, as they lost five of the next six presidential elections, before the rising tide of immigration turned California from a Republican “red” state into a Democrat “blue” state. We have gone from Republican landslides to close elections, now usually won by Democrats such as Obama or Clinton.

In 1993, Senator Harry Reid took the floor of the Senate to introduce a bill that would end the automatic citizenship for the children of illegal aliens. Coulter quoted him in her book: “If making it easy to be an illegal alien isn’t enough, how about offering a reward for being an illegal immigrant?” Reid then listed the rewards, which included U.S. citizenship, the guarantee of full access to all public and social services American society provides. “Is it any wonder,” Reid asked, “that two-thirds of the babies born at taxpayer expense in county-run hospitals in Los Angeles are born to illegal alien mothers?”

“No sane country would do that,” Reid said then. But, of course, he has now changed his tune, and supports amnesty and the weakening of immigration laws because he has discovered that these newer immigrants tend to provide more votes for Democrat candidates such as himself. With powerful donors’ heavy influence on the Republican Party, because of the cheap labor these illegal immigrants provide, it is not surprising that Obama is emboldened to ignore American immigration law.